B.A. Paris

Last updated

B.A. Paris
Baparis.jpg
BornSurrey, UK
Pen nameB.A. Paris
OccupationAuthor
Notable worksBehind Closed Doors (2016)
SpouseCalum MacDougall
Website
baparis.com

B.A. Paris (Bernadette MacDougall) [1] is a Franco-British writer of fiction, mainly in the psychological thriller subgenre. Her debut novel, Behind Closed Doors (2016), was a New York Times [2] and Sunday Times bestseller. It has been translated into 40 languages and has sold more than 3.5 million copies worldwide.

Contents

Her other books include The Breakdown (2017), [3] Bring Me Back (2018), The Dilemma (2019) [1] [4] and The Therapist (2021).

Background

B.A. Paris was born in Surrey, England, in 1958 to a French mother and Irish father. She is the third of 6 children, including 4 brothers and a sister. After completing her education, she moved to France, where she worked as a trader in an international bank in Paris for several years. During this time, she met her husband, with whom she now has 5 daughters. They eventually left the world of finance to set up a language school together.

It was only after turning 50 that B.A. Paris began writing, when one of her daughters suggested she enter a writing competition advertised in a magazine. While she didn't win, this led her to write her first novels, including her internationally bestselling debut Behind Closed Doors. She is published by HarperCollins Publishers in the UK and St Martin's Press in the US.

Today, B.A. Paris lives in Hampshire with her husband and continues to write psychological thrillers. They have 5 children together.

Novels

Success of Behind Closed Doors

B.A. Paris's debut novel Behind Closed Doors was picked up in 2014 by her agent, Camilla Bolton, at the Darley Anderson Literary Agency in London. Upon being published the following year by HarperCollins Publishers, the book quickly became a #1 New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller. She was nominated in the Best Debut Author and Best Mystery & Thriller categories of the Goodreads Choice Awards of 2016.

In 2017, Behind Closed Doors won the Gold Nielsen Bestseller Award for UK sales of 500,000 copies, making B.A. Paris the only debut fiction author to win a gold award that year. The book went on to win the Platinum Nielsen Bestseller Award in 2019 for sales of 1,000,000 copies in the UK alone. To date, more than 3.5 million copies of Behind Closed Doors have sold globally since its release.

The film and TV rights for the story were acquired by Stone Village Productions in 2016. As of 2022, the film adaptation of Behind Closed Doors is in post-production. The film is titled Blackwater Lane and is directed by Jeff Celentano. [5]

List of published works

Critical reception

Writing for The Toronto Star, Jack Batten said Paris "is a consistent whiz at stitching any number of random events and devious characters into a winner of a plot." [6]

The Guardian critic Alison Flood said The Prisoner had an "excellent premise," but "didn’t quite live up to [its] promise." [7]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kate Mosse</span> English writer (born 1961)

Katherine Louise Mosse is a British novelist, non-fiction and short story writer and broadcaster. She is best known for her 2005 novel Labyrinth, which has been translated into more than 37 languages. She co-founded in 1996 the annual award for best UK-published English-language novel by a woman that is now known as the Women's Prize for Fiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Catherine Chidgey</span> New Zealand writer

Catherine Chidgey is a New Zealand novelist, short-story writer and university lecturer. She has published eight novels. Her honours include the inaugural Prize in Modern Letters; the Katherine Mansfield Fellowship to Menton, France; Best First Book at both the New Zealand Book Awards and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize ; the Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards on two occasions; and the Janet Frame Fiction Prize.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Helen Fielding</span> English novelist and screenwriter

Helen Fielding is British journalist, novelist and screenwriter, best known as the creator of the fictional character Bridget Jones. Fielding’s first novel was set in a refugee camp in East Africa and she started writing Bridget Jones in an anonymous column in London’s Independent newspaper. This turned into an unexpected hit, leading to four Bridget Jones novels, three movies, with a fourth movie announced in April 2024 for release in 2025.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elizabeth Kostova</span> American writer (born 1964)

Elizabeth Johnson Kostova is an American author best known for her debut novel The Historian.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michelle Richmond</span> American novelist

Michelle Richmond is an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. She wrote The Year of Fog, which was a New York Times bestseller,The Marriage Pact, which was a Sunday Times bestseller, and six other books of fiction.

A Christian novel is a Christian literary novel which features Christian media genre conventions.

Christine Feehan is an American author of paranormal romance, paranormal military thrillers, and fantasy. She is a #1 New York Times, #1 Publishers Weekly, and International bestselling author of seven series; Carpathian, GhostWalker Series, Drake Sisters, Sister of the HeartSeries, Shadow Riders Series, Leopard Series and Torpedo Ink Series. Six of the seven series have made #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. As of January 2020 she has 80 published novels. The first in her Torpedo Ink Series, Judgment Road, debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestsellers list.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jojo Moyes</span> English novelist and journalist

Pauline Sara Jo Moyes, known professionally as Jojo Moyes, is an English journalist and, since 2002, an award-winning romance novelist, #1 New York Times best selling author and screenwriter. She is one of only a few authors to have twice won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award by the Romantic Novelists' Association and her works have been translated into twenty-eight languages and have sold over 40 million copies worldwide.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Danielle Trussoni</span> American novelist

Danielle Anne Trussoni is a New York Times, USA Today, and Sunday Times Top 10 bestselling novelist. She has been a Pulitzer Prize in Fiction jurist, and wrote the "Dark Matters" column for the New York Times Book Review for five years, from 2018-2023. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop, where she was a Maytag Fellow. Her novels have been translated into 33 languages.

Lauren Belfer is an American author of four novels: City of Light, A Fierce Radiance, And After the Fire andAshton Hall, which was published in June 2022.

Tana French is an American-Irish writer and theatrical actress. She is a longtime resident of Dublin, Ireland. Her debut novel In the Woods (2007), a psychological mystery, won the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, and Barry awards for best first novel. The Independent has referred to her as "the First Lady of Irish Crime".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tosca Lee</span> American author of Christian fiction

Tosca Lee is a bestselling American author known for her historical novels and thrillers.

Elizabeth Haynes is a British writer of crime fiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">J. T. Ellison</span> American writer

J. T. Ellison is a New York Times bestselling American author. She writes domestic noir and psychological thrillers, the latter starring Nashville Homicide Lt. Taylor Jackson and medical examiner Dr. Samantha Owens. She also pens the "A Brit in the FBI" series with #1 New York Times bestselling author Catherine Coulter. With over a million books in print, Ellison's work has been published in twenty-eight countries and sixteen languages. She is also the co-host of the Emmy Award-winning television series, A Word on Words, which airs on Nashville Public Television. Ellison is also the founder of Two Tales Press, an independent publishing house, and The Wine Vixen, a wine review website. She lives with her husband in Nashville, Tennessee.

Cally Taylor is best known for her alias C.L. Taylor, a Sunday Times bestselling crime author. As Cally Taylor she wrote romantic comedies published by Orion Publishing Group and as C.L. Taylor, she publishes psychological thrillers through HarperCollins.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clare Mackintosh</span> British author and former police officer

Clare Mackintosh is a British author and former police officer. Her novels are published in more than 40 languages and have sold more than two million copies worldwide.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">J. D. Barker</span> American author (born 1971)

Jonathan Dylan Barker is a New York Times and international bestselling American author of suspense thrillers, often incorporating elements of horror, crime, mystery, science fiction, and the supernatural. His debut novel, Forsaken, was a finalist for a Bram Stoker Award in 2014.

<i>What Happened</i> (Clinton book) 2017 memoir by Hillary Clinton

What Happened is a 2017 memoir by Hillary Clinton about her experiences as the Democratic Party's nominee and general election candidate for president of the United States in the 2016 election. Published on September 1, 2017, it is her seventh book with her publisher, Simon & Schuster.

Gillian McAllister is a British Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author, known for seven novels, some of which have been top ten bestsellers. Her works have been translated into 40 languages. She has been selected for the Reese Witherspoon book club, the Richard and Judy book club, the Radio 2 book club and shortlisted for a national book award. Several of her novels have been optioned for television and film. Her seventh novel, Wrong Place Wrong Time, reached number 4 on the Sunday Times bestseller list and number 2 on the New York Times bestseller list.

Alex Lane is an American actor, screenwriter and producer of Russian and Ukrainian origins. He also holds a Belgian citizenship, as he partially grew up in Antwerp, Belgium.

References

  1. 1 2 McDonald, Sally. "Meet the author: The Dilemma writer BA Paris". Sunday Post. Retrieved 10 April 2023.
  2. "Paperback Trade Fiction Books - Best Sellers - Aug. 6, 2017 - The New York Times". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 20 November 2020.
  3. "Fiction Book Review: The Breakdown by B.A. Paris. St. Martin's, $25.99 (336p) ISBN 978-1-250-12246-9". PublishersWeekly.com. 26 May 2017. Retrieved 21 November 2020.
  4. "Review: 'The Dilemma,' by B.A. Paris". Star Tribune. Retrieved 20 November 2020.
  5. Dalton, Ben (13 October 2022). "Minka Kelly, Maggie Grace, Dermot Mulroney to star in B.A. Paris adaptation 'Blackwater Lane'". screendaily.com. Screen International.
  6. "Review | Devious characters, grisly crimes mark the newest crop of mystery books". thestar.com. 22 June 2018. Retrieved 9 January 2023.
  7. "The best recent crime and thriller writing – review roundup". the Guardian. 30 October 2022. Retrieved 9 January 2023.